Despite the constant barrage of headlines that have reported tens of thousands of corporate, AI-driven layoffs over the past several months, Big Tech and its allies want people to believe that AI isn’t coming for their jobs. This perspective completely disregards reality. There won’t be a sudden labor market collapse, but rather, a slow, steady erosion.
The main fallacy that skeptics of AI’s negative impact on the workforce fall victim to is that they believe that AI should have disrupted far more jobs than it already has if there were truly an “apocalypse” coming. However, economic disruption rarely arrives with a bang.
The Industrial Revolution is a prime example. People often cite it as proof that technological progress creates more jobs than it destroys. However, that is only one part of the story.
Between 1900 and 2000, agricultural employment dropped from roughly 41% of the workforce to about 2%, even as agricultural production surged. Displaced workers were able to move into manufacturing, but automation eventually reshaped industrial jobs as well. In the 1950s, agriculture, manufacturing, and construction accounted for 35% of American employment. By 2015, those sectors made up barely 15% of the workforce.
Sure, the Industrial Revolution created higher living standards and the expansion of America’s free markets. But those positives often masked worker displacement during the technological transition, where workers had to migrate frequently, retrain, and accept stagnated wages. AI might not even make those options possible as it eases its way into each facet of our everyday lives.
Simply looking at unemployment numbers alone is not a good way to examine AI’s impact on labor. AI is already automating writing, coding, administrative work, and much more. Companies aren’t necessarily going to lay off employees immediately as they adopt AI. Slowly, as they integrate more task automation into their workforce, they’ll freeze hiring and allow positions to gradually disappear through attrition.
AI is also currently displacing workers before they even have the chance to enter the labor force. Sixty-six percent of companies plan to reduce entry-level hiring due to the prioritization of AI tools over the next three years. Recent college graduates are experiencing this firsthand. Research from Stanford University found that in industries identified as vulnerable to AI automation, there was a 16% decline in employment for workers between the ages of 22 and 25.
In short, quick rejections of the idea of an AI-driven job “bloodbath” ignore lessons that America has learned over the past two centuries. America has been able to continue to prosper through technological revolutions because it adequately prepared for and addressed them.
AI will almost certainly give way to economic growth and innovation, but history suggests that its workforce impact will not arrive as a crisis. Patterns will emerge gradually and only become obvious after there are no lanes for opportunity left.
The Industrial Revolution produced a century-long transformation that steadily reduced the share of human labor needed to perform essential work. Advanced AI, as it displaces workers across all industries, will not just do the same, but shine a light on the vulnerabilities of our country’s economy and social safety net.
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AI will not collapse our labor force but kill it slowly. America must prepare now — not for an “apocalypse,” but for decades of mitigation of AI’s consequences. We have to ensure that emerging technology strengthens America’s workforce instead of replacing it, and that everyday people are able to continue to provide for their families — not just put money in the pockets of Big Tech leaders who profit off of misleading American workers.
Brendan Steinhauser is the CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, a nonprofit organization that seeks to educate policymakers and the public about the implications of advanced AI.
